Hermione

For those of you who used to read the Toy Box Philosopher blog, you'll know that I love the Harry Potter books and movies.  I really enjoyed reviewing several Hermione Granger dolls (this one is my favorite).  Because of this obsession, I knew from the very first moment I visited Doll Clothes by Carole that I wanted to use Carole's amazing handmade Harry Potter costumes to create a small series of My Twinn dolls from this wonderful fantasy world.

The next four dolls that I'll share here will be based on Harry Potter characters.  Two of them (Hermione and Luna) will wear full Hogwarts robes while the other two (Ginny and Cho) will have simpler costumes to keep their prices lower.  These dolls will all be posted on Etsy at the same time--once the collection is complete.

I decided not to make Harry Potter himself mostly because I was unable to find appropriate glasses or a good wig.

I'm going to start this series with my favorite character, Hermione.  There isn't a My Twinn face mold that fully captures Hermione's sassy, expressive personality, but I settled on the Denika head because it has a bit more character than the other faces I have on hand:

1999 My Twinn doll with the Denika face mold.

Before I start a series like this, I lay out all of my available dolls and do "casting" for who seems like the right doll for each roll.  When I was searching for the right doll to be Hermione, the two who stood out were a pair of Denika twins:

These two were almost identical--each with the same skin tone, the same greenish eyes, and the same color of hair.  I was really tempted to choose the doll on the right because her messy hair is definitely channeling Hermione, but I ended up settling on the doll on the left, mostly because her body was in better condition and her original eyebrows weren't anything I felt I should preserve.

She was a lovely girl right from the start:

Her 1999 body poses without too many squeaks and has very few picks:

Here she is from the back:

She was very well taken care of in her previous home:

Most of Hermione's flaws were concentrated on her head.  She was dirty, her eyelashes were damaged, and she had several scuffs and marks on her forehead:

I removed her head, wig, and eyelashes and then gave her head a basic cleaning with soap and water:

Her eyes are an intense color, and they look interesting in photographs:

However, I suspect that the color has faded a little from the original hazel or green, because in person the eyes are just slightly too yellow (and a bit eerie!).  Still, I felt a pang of regret that I'd have to swap the eyes in order to make them accurate to the Hermione character.

There were a few marks on Hermione's forehead that were stubborn to my initial washing efforts:

And I also didn't really like the shape of her lips.  The upper lip of the Denika face is often painted to look pointy:

So, I scrubbed Hermione's forehead with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to get rid of the remaining spots, and then I stripped her lip paint with acetone:

I chose brown Eyeco P019 acrylic eyes for Hermione, but they were a huge pain to get into place.  It must have taken me an hour (and several head heatings) to get the job done. 

I paused to take this picture part way through my struggles because the eye roll is such a classic Hermione expression!

Honestly, Harry!

Fortunately, the eyes finally settled into place without doing any damage to the sockets.

I'm not sure if I love this particular shade of brown eye, but I like it.  It's better than many of the brown Eyeco eyes that I've tried in the past.  I like this color and Deep Sable the best.

Eyeco P019 eyes.

My biggest challenge with Hermione was to try and get her eyebrows to look right.  I referred to the character description in the books as I was making eye and hair color decisions, but for the eyebrows I was thinking about Emma Watson's appearance in the first movie.

I used this printed photo of Ms. Watson as a guide:

First I sketched in a rough shape with my watercolor pencils:

Then I filled in the shape a bit more...

...and then I painted over everything with acrylic paint:

I tried to make these eyebrows darker and a bit more chaotic than my usual brows:

Once I was happy with the brows, I gave Hermione some blush and new lip color:

Here's a closer look at Hermione's new mouth.  I did my best to reduce the pointy shape of her upper lip:

I also added freckles, although it's never mentioned whether or not Hermione has freckles in the book (at least I don't think it is).  Emma Watson certainly has freckles, though, so that was my excuse.

I gave Hermione's head a few light coats of sealant once all of the painting was complete.

I finished Hermione's face by giving her some new dark brown eyelashes from Monique:

While I was working on Hermione's head, I was also trying to reduce some faint ink stains on her knees:

The stains are easier to see on the right leg:

Here's the left leg:

I coated the stains with Remove-Zit and covered them in plastic for a few days:

The stains didn't completely disappear, but they're a bit less noticeable now:

Here's the right knee again:

The other challenge with this doll was to find the right wig.  I tried a few different wigs and ended up settling on a Forest Sobazu wig from Dollmore.  The color of the wig is a bit too dark for Hermione, but the shape is right.

After I'd re-assembled Hermione and glued her wig, I finally got to dress her in Carole's amazing Harry Potter costume!  This outfit comes with a pleated skirt, a white shirt, a tie, a grey vest, and a fully-lined Hogwarts robe with an embroidered crest.

I added black tights, shoes, and a small metal wand.  I also replaced the grey vest with a hand-knit v-neck vest that has the Gryffindor colors.

Here's Hermione, all ready for her first year at Hogwarts!

I always used to say in my Toy Box Philosopher reviews that if the costume and hair were done correctly, a doll would be clearly recognizable as Hermione.  I think Carole's outfit is great and the hair is close enough!

The robe from this outfit is really fantastic.  It buttons at the top:

And it has a full hood and wonderful flared sleeves:

I think the embroidered crest is especially nice:

The entire robe is lined with burgundy fabric:

I asked Hermione to take her robe off for a minute so that you could see the rest of her outfit a little better:

Here's a closer look at the crest:

And this is the rest of Hermione's uniform:

I'm not an expert knitter or anything like that, and I didn't have a pattern for this vest, so it's not a work of art.  However, I used to knit little stuffed toy horses for myself when I was a kid, so I can complete basic projects with fair success.

I did my best to match the colors in the vest to the colors in Hermione's tie:

The shoes are new from Deb's eBay store, but the straps are super loose for some reason.  Perhaps so that they can fit over thicker socks?  I might try to punch another hole in the strap, if I can find a good tool for doing that.

The wand is a metal stylus that I found on Etsy.  It's a little too small for Hermione's scale, but the details are excellent and are accurate to Hermione's movie wand:

This is probably a good time to show you some of the imperfections with Hermione's wig.  I find Dollmore wigs a bit harder to manage than Monique or custom wigs.  The wig caps are thin and tend to be light-colored, which can make them look unsightly along the hairline:

In addition, because I wanted Hermione's bangs to fall just above her eyebrows, I set the wig back on the head a bit, and this revealed some of the old wig's yellow glue stains:

Fortunately, the cut of this wig makes it really hard to expose these messy areas, so it's not an obvious problem.

The wig is full and wavy and about waist length in the back:

Hermione's coloring photographs a bit better without her robe, so I took this opportunity to do a simple front-on portrait of her:

And her transformation GIF:

Here are a few more pictures of Hermione in her sweater vest:

I also want to give you a quick look at the uniform underneath the sweater:

This outfit usually comes with a white blouse with a rounded collar, but I asked Carole to make shirts with pointed collars for my Hogwarts girls.  I think that this style of collar is more accurate to the movie costumes:

The tie has embroidered gold stripes.  It loops around the neck with an elastic band, which makes it very easy to get on and off.

Underneath the tie, it looks like the shirt closes with buttons, but the buttons are only decorative. The shirt closes with a long strip of velcro:

I put Hermione's robe back on for a few last pictures...

...and then part way through this session, I noticed a very faint stain on the top of Hermione's right hand.  I'm not sure if you can even see it in this shot, but it's over the knuckle of her pointer finger:

I freaked out at this point, thinking that the black hem of the robe's sleeve had stained Hermione during the 30 minutes that it'd been in contact with her hand!  Ahhhhh!!!!

I immediately took the robe off and put it onto a headless body that I have on hand for fitting clothes.  I even folded the sleeves under so that the maximum amount of black was touching the hands.  After four days of wearing the robe, this body does not have any hand stains, so I feel pretty confident that Hermione's stain is old.  

Despite that reassurance, it's always good to be careful with dark clothing and vinyl dolls.

It'd be a shame for Hermione to not wear her robe at all, though, because I think it looks fabulous on her:

Once I was confident that that robe wasn't causing immediate damage, I had a lot of fun doing some action shots with Hermione and her wand:

The wand is held onto Hermione's hand with some clear rubber bands that I've tried to edit out of the pictures.  I'll send a few of these bands with Hermione to her new home.

For this picture, I used some cut-and-paste magic so that Hermione could do her signature spell!

Wingardium Leviosa!

I've been wanting to create a doll like this for a long time.  I purchased the Hogwarts robes from Carole back in August, and just kept putting things off for one reason or another.  At long last, the shelter-in-place orders that we have in Maine right now provided the perfect opportunity to get out my knitting and make the vest that I needed to complete my vision.  Now I'm super-excited to knit some more vests, paint the other three dolls in this series, and maybe binge-watch some Harry Potter movies while I'm at it!

For all of the time it took me to complete this doll, she wasn't especially high maintenance.  Here's a summary of the work that was done on Hermione: 

-her head, old wig, and old eyelashes were removed

-her head was cleaned and a few scuffs on her forehead were removed

-her factory lip paint was stripped

-her old eyes were removed and replaced with dark brown Eyeco P019 acrylic eyes

-her face was repainted, including eyebrows, blush, lips, and light freckles

-her face was sprayed with two light coats of Mr. Super Clear sealant

-she was given new eyelashes

-she was given a new Dollmore Forest Sobazu wig

-her head was reattached

-she will come with a full Hogwarts uniform including skirt, shirt, grey vest, tie, and robe from Doll Clothes by Carole

-her outfit will also include a hand knitted sweater vest, a metal wand (with some clear bands to help with posing), black tights, and black shoes

Hermione's biggest flaw is that the glued edges of her wig look a little messy and expose some of the old wig glue stains.  However, the style of her hair makes these areas very hard to see.  Hermione also has some residual staining on her knees and a very faint stain on the back of her hand.  Her head wobbles a tiny bit, but this isn't because of a glue issue--it's just a small wobble in the joint.  Otherwise, she is in good condition with just a few picks and small marks from being old.

I hope there are Harry Potter fans out there who will enjoy looking at Hermione as much as I enjoyed making her!  Update: Hermione has sold.  Thank you!

Hermione will finish things off by casting a spell on all of you to stay healthy!

Impervius Virosa!